25. Claire

What the fuck and why?

I still can"t piece it all together and I don"t want to at the moment. Three black vans with tinted windows pull up as Bianca Marzano sits against her car, a vacant stare in her eyes as Julian kicks the gun out of her reach.

Bonnie"s picked up and carried off somewhere, and Danny"s still guilt ridden over her actions in tonight"s chaos. Julian approaches us both, pulling me into his arms and kissing me tenderly on the forehead before balking at the odor coating every inch of my body.

"Fuck, what is that smell?" he asks.

I toss a glance over my shoulder. "They held us in some sort of garbage sorting room. I figure since they"re not wearing masks, they never intended to let us go. Probably would have left us in that trash room where no one would find the bodies. Bonnie saved us. She took control and got me through it, got us out here where she put herself in harm"s way."

Danny approaches us, her eyes watering with tears. "Julian, Mr. Blackwell, I mean, I"m so sorry about all of this. I didn"t know this is what The Judge wanted. He only told me to keep Claire busy while he spoke to you. He never said these men would take us. I"m so sorry."

"Charleston was blackmailing her, Julian," I tell him. "This isn"t her fault."

"I know too well what Charleston Blackwell is capable of. Let"s get you home, and Bonnie to the hospital." Julian"s words are solemn.

My curiosity won"t let me just walk away. "What are you going to do about your parents?"

"Disown them, bury one and put the other one in a padded room where she can"t hurt anyone else." Julian"s words are ripe with certainty as he leads me away from a place where I could have taken my last breath.

There aren"t enough showers and baths in the world to scrub a memory of trauma. While the stench no longer hangs around me like a dark cloud, the flashes of bodies bleeding out on the floor haunt me over the next few days and nights. The sounds of gunshots startle me awake, giving me a brand-new set of terrors to dream about alongside the death of my father.

My routine with Bonnie is broken until she is able to come back to work. One morning, about a week after the kidnapping, Julian surprises me by waiting for me in the training room.

"I"m happy to see you"re still doing this, even if you"re doing it alone," he says.

"I have to do something or I"ll go crazy. I can"t stop seeing it. The puddle of blood under one guy"s head, the splatter of blood around the other. Your Mom holding her gun at me because you love me."

Julian smiles. "I don"t want to toss that word around, but I do Claire. It doesn"t make sense how fast it happened and I"m not looking for you to say it back. I"m here this morning to ask you to come somewhere with me. I owe you four days, remember?"

That brings a smile to my face.

"Yeah, I"d love to get out of this city. Where are we going?" I ask him.

"There"s a club I belong to with an estate in Lake Tahoe. It"s serene, has a gun range and a dungeon. It"s also owned by someone who I think can help you. We can talk about anything you want. I"ll tell you everything you want to know, but there are just a few things I have to handle before we go."

"I"ll go." I tell him, and then it clicks. "What do you mean by someone who can help me? Are you trying to have me institutionalized like your mother?"

"No! Claire, no. Dr. Mescal, Malia, is a trauma specialist."

"Your kinky sex doctor ex-girlfriend?" I ask him with anger and jealousy spilling from me.

"Our relationship happened around the same time your Mom and Dad got together. The way they loved each other was something special. It didn"t matter they were only nineteen, you could just tell the way Derek doted on her, the way he respected her, the way he cared for her and then the way he cared for you that there was so much love he had to give because our childhoods didn"t allow us to do that."

"What does that have to do with you forcing me to see your ex for therapy?" I ask him.

"When I met Malia, Derek and Sue-Ell were like fucking Cupid, shooting their love arrows into everyone. Me and Malia weren"t compatible. We were friends trying to force ourselves to be something more because it looked good when your parents made love look easy. We didn"t last longer than a few weeks. She graduated from Princeton with us and stayed on the East Coast getting her doctorate. It wasn"t until after you and your Dad moved in here?—"

I stop him. "When did we live here?"

"Right after your Mom passed away. Me and Edward hung around to help your Dad get used to being a single parent. Your Mom," he pauses with a warm smile, "she was a planner. She planned everything, left us letters and notes. Reminders not to hate ourselves because of the fucked-up shit that happened to us. Reminders to not make the world pay for our trauma, and reminders to remember that a baby girl would be watching our every move."

"You have letters from my Mom?" I ask him.

"I have a single letter I kept. It"s not long, but basically it says to protect Derek from himself. Not to allow his grief to swallow the generous man he"d grown to be. Not to let him wallow alone and miserable for the rest of his life and let him find love after her. Your Dad was never going to move on. After you guys moved in, it wasn"t long, only two or three years, while we built Nuvola together, when it was the three of us. I dove into work, became the face of the company and my past reared its ugly head with the stress of starting the company. I needed an outlet."

"That"s where Malia came in?"

He nods. "Yeah, she told me about her trauma therapy after she ran into Edward. We talked in a traditional way and then she recommended a dungeon, a private club a friend of hers owned and my passion for pain ignited."

"Okay. I"ll meet her. If she can convince someone like you to be comfortable and honest with sharing everything that"s happened, clearly she"s good at her job."

"Thank you, Claire. I promise it"s going to be fun, too. But first, I have to take care of something. Well, someone, since you just called me out for being honest."

"Who?"

"Charleston"s had what"s coming to him for a long time. I"m going to get some answers to my questions and then, if you want to know, I"ll share them with you."

"I get a choice?"

Julian pulls me into his arms, hugging me softly as he whispers against the top of my head. "I"m sorry for just dumping my shit on you. I should have given you a choice, but for what"s coming next? I don"t want to add to your nightmares, I want to protect what"s left of this beautiful soul."

He leans away, letting his mouth angle down over mine for a kiss that reminds me how much I like him, care about him, and just maybe…love him.